The present invention concerns a method and apparatus for displaying information in a motor vehicle.
In present-day motor vehicles, absolutely no automated functions exist to support the driver in recognizing road signs. Such a function has, however, a high comfort and safety value, for example, in warning the driver of speed limits or prohibitions against passing and/or in informing the driver of temporarily applicable limitations to his request. As a practical matter, with the existing traffic infrastructure, road signs can only be recognized and analyzed with the aid of image sensors since the information is only available for analysis in optical form. Owing to the high comfort and safety relevance of road sign recognition, work is being done on video-based road sign recognition. All of the known approaches are based on a limited number of road signs to be recognized. Based on the number of signs to be recognized, the image recorded by the camera undergoes image segmenting to recognize and classify the relevant road signs. With the appropriate classification, the information in the road sign is obtained, for example, a 70 km/h speed limit. The classified road sign information is reported to the driver via an appropriate display area in which, for example, the number combination xe2x80x9c70xe2x80x9d is displayed. The method of analyzing the information in the image obtained by the sensor for road signs and displaying the information to the driver may be problematic because the classification must be made very reliably. Otherwise it cannot be ruled out that the driver may be given incorrect information. It is believed that incorrect classifications may not only reduce the acceptance of such a system, as well as its reliabilty. If for example, a driver is supplied with an incorrect speed limit resulting in his exceeding the maximum speed limit, the question arises as to who will assume the liability for damages resulting from this. Based on the related art, incorrect classifications cannot be ruled out in the recognition of road signs.
In contrast, the method according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention for the display of information has the advantage that a segment of the image obtained by the sensor is displayed directly without an analysis of the content of the road sign and a classification being made. The analysis of the camera""s image searches for the outlines of the road signs and presents this image segment directly to the driver. The driver himself performs the classification; the road sign is merely pointed out to him and it is presented to him as a support. Should an error occur in the analysis, the driver is only presented an image segment without a road sign which he can simply ignore.
In an exemplary embodiment, information in addition to the road sign can be presented if the analysis unit additionally receives information from other vehicle sensors besides the camera, and both the time as well as the distance since the last recognition of a road sign can be displayed.
The exemplary method, method can also record road signs with supplemental information, for example, xe2x80x9conly when wetxe2x80x9d in the case of speed limits. The road sign is displayed with the additional sign, the presentation in the display area not actually being able to resolve the lettering but pointing out the presence of the supplemental sign.
It is also believed that with additional warning of the driver based on a road sign classification, the transparency of the method is preserved. The driver can easily compare the acoustic, haptic, or optical warning to the driver based on the information processing by comparing it with the image in the display area.